TV Show Whose Decline Saddens You the Most

[Khan]

"Sylvia" should be much lower on the list.  For God's sake, she was raped by a guy in a clown mask!

[Soaplovers]

 

I'm upset A Matter of Faith was #61 on the list... that was a great season 2 episode where Mrs. Ingall is left home alone, gets an infection, and has to use faith/intelligence/bravery to save herself.

[Roman]

well, to this day the ones that got me.......Sylvia, Parts 1 & 2. and I am OFFENDED they both aren't in at least the top 15.

 

[dragonflies]

"A Matter of Faith" is one of the best episodes of the series

[Huntress]

Popular on the WB. The first season was fantastic, but the second (and ultimately final) one got too melodramatic and had too much focus on the wrong characters.

 

Third Watch on NBC. Loved the first four seasons, but once they dropped most of the firefighters and paramedics, I was out.

 

The OC on FOX. Fantastic first season, but became atrocious after that. In retrospect, season 4 was more or less a thank-you gift for the fans to bring closure to the story. I don't think the show could have survived another year after that.

 

90210 on the CW. They could have done so much with the original show's legacy in mind, and I felt they were on the right track for some time, but season 4 really killed every positive aspect the show ever had. They just didn't bother anymore.

 

Boston Public on FOX. It could never retain the magic of the first season, especially after all these (pointless) cast changes.

[vetsoapfan]

 

OMG, yes, the first season of THE OC was so good and then...God only knows what happened. Creator Josh Schwartz admitted much later that he thought the audience was enamoured with his writing style, but only realized afterwards that viewers cared more about the ORIGINAL CHARACTERS than just his scripts, and as the show tampered with the cast and concepts, the chemistry was lost and the fans revolted. He laughed about how hugely unpopular some of the later cast additions like Johnny were. For me personally, I was glad about the last season because the end did improve again and it brought closer to that world. (Boy, did I have the hots for Ryan Atwood!)

 

As for the CW's 90210, what a mess it turned out to be. It had a massive, built-in audience, ready and eager to see a follow-up to the original series, but the new show squandered most of its opportunity and tarnished the franchise's legacy.

[Soaplovers]

 

I think The OC could have maintained the momentum it started with if someone had sat the creator down and told him to slow the pace down a bit and focus more on character/plot and less on the quirky one liners and being trendy.  Although it must have burned the creator that Marissa was such a bust and that her mother Julie became the head bitch in charge.. and he had to write more for her than he probably wanted to.

 

I think killing Marissa actually made season 4 a 'rebirth' of sorts since Ryan had to grieve and learn to move on without the possiblity/potential of another round of Ryan/marissa redux.

 

90210... Annie was so not a Brenda.  The only time I was interested in the show in season 1 was when Brenda, Donna, and Kelly visited... and wanting to know who the father of Kelly's son was.

[Vee]

90210 v2.0 was cursed. It had all the good setup in the world as an idea but had zero respect for its existing past characters or the family setup - Jennie Garth, Lori Loughlin, Rob Estes, Ryan Eggold, etc. were all unceremoniously written out and poorly treated onscreen and off and I don't think any of them were happy about it. All of a sudden the lead kids/Walsh analogs in town have no parents? And the new cast was either miscast or not strong enough to carry that show alone, even poor AnnaLynne McCord (who hated her ending on the series so much that she and her prior love interest went off and filmed their own for Twitter, apparently). I stopped watching after Season 2, though.

 

That shît wouldn't happen today - I think a 90210 revival today would be handled with a lot more of the care you frankly see in recent revivals.

Boston Public was all David E. Kelley's worst excesses and never good AFAIC, but it sure did get worse when it became all about Anthony Heald, Nicky Katt, Jeri Ryan and Kathy Baker's psychotic mom character who we were apparently supposed to root for - all great actors made unbearable by an awful show. I remember them dumping a ton of people, like Jessalyn Gilsig, Rashida Jones, etc.

[Huntress]

 

I wouldn't say the new cast was miscast because at least AnnaLynne McCord, Jessica Lowndes, Jessica Stroup and Matt Lanter (and Gillian Zinser but she was treated second-rate anyway) were capable actors and had a lot of charisma, but the main problem was the writing. There was no character one could identify with, and this so-called "gang" had no sense of friendship. They were all horrible creatures. Didn't help that storylines (and characters) were dropped here and there, and that three or four triangle storylines were going on at the same time. Couples switched every second week. Just a big NO.

 

 

The main story in season 1 was the blossoming romance between Lauren and Harry, then season 2 started – and boom! They didn't even interact with each other anymore. Enter Jeri Ryan and Michael Rapaport as new teachers, and it went downhill from there.

[Vee]

I never felt Jessica Lowndes or Jessica Stroup could handle the amount of material they got, though in fairness most of it was bad. Stroup was miscast as (Erin) Silver. Tristan Wilds, Shenae Grimes, Lanter and even Dustin Milligan were fine in doses but they couldn't carry the show. And Gillian Zinser and the guy playing Navid definitely couldn't. I agree the biggest issue was the writing, deeply unsympathetic characters and constantly changing stories and couples. Wasn't Adriana practically the Antichrist by the end?

 

I didn't like the first season stories of BP at all, but the later ones were even worse. I felt bad for Jeri Ryan, who's so talented. BP was typical of Kelley - bland romance and stories all abruptly canned because he got bored, a slew of actors fired en masse. This was his M.O. in the later declining years of his network career, at Chicago Hope, The Practice, even Ally McBeal. I guess Big Little Lies is a new renaissance for him though.

[Huntress]

 

No, because they never dared to follow any route with their characters. They wrote people into corners only to redeem them in the blink of an eye with the worst explanations. Annie was blacklisted by the gang in season 2 after she supposedly slept with Liam and had that hit and run accident. They spent the whole season portraying her as the misunderstood outcast, but then at the end of season, she was redeemed within seconds, and come season 3, she was besties with everyone else again.

 

At the end of season 3, everybody hated Adrianna and she thought about committing suicide by jumping from a cliff, but the next season she reappeared as the "reformed" Adrianna, becoming buddy-buddy with Liam, trying to act as a moral center and all. The following season she went back to her old habits, cheating on Dixon, ruining his music label and whatnot. She also fought with Silver over Naomi and Annie's half-brother (who was also sent into storyline nirvana very quickly). In the end, Adrianna and Navid received their happy ending 

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(God, why do I even remember so much about this show.)

 

 

I thought these three were the weakest links. Especially Grimes' overacting in all of her scenes.

 

Edit: I just remembered another show that fits into this category: True Blood. Wonderful in its first season, enjoyable from seasons 2 to 4, and then falling apart in season 5. All the new characters they added in season 6 were pointless, and in the final season, most of the remaining original cast members were left with no exciting storyline. Instead they added everybody and their mother (in Tara's case, literally) to the main cast. If you only have 10 episodes per season, you don't need 25 people appearing on the opening credits. The only saving grace were Pam, Jessica, Jason, Sarah Newlin, and to some extent Eric.

[Roman]

SOAP.

The last season was just bad IMPO. the writing either changed or they lost people...I can't put my finger on t, but it just wasn't good. there were some great episodes and one thing  I still appreciate is drama at times in good sitcoms. I just didn't enjoy it. 

[Vee]

I couldn't stand Navid and Adriana after a certain point, so I don't have that attachment. They overexposed them fast.

[xtr]

I'm going to add "Ugly Betty" to this thread. The show was originally supposed to focus on a young woman who was trying to make her way in the fashion magazine industry, but it started going downhill once they placed a big focus on Betty's love life. And gave her a ton of unnecessary love interests. Including people that didn't make any sense for her or with her (like the EMO acting Jesse). 

 

The heavy focus on her love life ended up dragging down the show and took away time from developing storylines for other characters. It all started when they had her boyfriend Henry (who she had a ton of chemistry with and who IMO should have been a long term love interest for her) break up with Betty because he found out he impregnated his ex Charlie, and then her love life spiraled from there. One of the producers of the show even admitted that they were going to stop focusing so much on her love life. but he went back on what he said and continue to give her unnecessary love interests that hurt the show.

[DRW50]

 

For me the penultimate season was what ruined Soap. The alien Burt story was just crass thanks to so much focus on alien Burt's sex life with Mary (which today would be called rape). The story with Danny and Lynne Moody just made me angry because I really liked Lynne Moody's work on her other shows and they wasted her on a very one-note, unfunny story about Danny proving he wasn't a racist. The custody battle with Jodie and Carol was boring and depressing to watch. Billy and the teacher just felt weird, and not in a campy Soap way. I also did not like the Eunice/Dutch/Corinne triangle or anything about the Dutch/Corinne storyline. I can't even remember what Chester and Jessica were doing at this time - if this is when Jessica was "dying," I liked that story.

 

The last season was, on paper, a huge mess, but it felt much more like Soap to me.